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Ask a person why they bought the car they drive and one of the following criteria will almost certainly be mentioned: safety, value, performance, design, and/or efficiency. Jaguar is looking to add another slice of criteria to the list that one considers – sound. Auditory bliss might be a better way to put it. Sonic heaven. Exhaust, perfected. The devil’s own horn, and I mean it. But really the incredible noises that come roaring and bellowing out of the Jaguar F-Type R Coupe’s pipes are indeed nothing more than sound. The question then becomes would you ever buy a car simply for the sound? Better still, would you ever buy a $117K machine simply for the noises it makes? A crazy question, I agree. Though perhaps it’s the best reason of all.

The F-Type Coupe R sounds like an autopomorphic soccer hooligan. As if the big red cat’s genetically predisposed to pelt the other cars with empty lager cans. And that’s just while cruising up and down the block. Open this monster up, and boy howdy! The R Coupe sounds good, incredibly, raucously, dirty, filthy double plus good. If you’re another car, you’ll be embarrassed that you almost certainly don’t sound anywhere near as sexy, as evocative, as angrily hostile. Unless you’re packing some sort of angel dust-sniffin’ V-12 under your bonnet, you can’t compete with this mad Jag. Even then it’s highly doubtful. Face the facts, you need singing lessons. Before this turns into nothing but praise for the roaring, whooping, wailing monster sounds coming from the frothing, supercharged V-8, let’s run through the other criteria.

We can dispense with safety, design and efficiency for the following reasons. No U.S. sanctioned entity has crashed one, so we really can’t say anything concrete. I reached out to Jaguar for information on European crash testing and they never got back to me. Design-wise, I think the F-Type looks fabulous, especially the hard top version. I haven’t seen a rear end like it since the Porsche 928, one of my all time favorites. You might think the F-Type Coupe looks like a catfish. Either way, Jaguar faithful like our own Kim Reynolds quickly point out that the car’s not as pretty as an E-Type. How do you win that argument? As for efficiency, do you really care? Really?

Value’s an interesting one. The R Coupe starts life at $99,925, making it the priciest F-Type you can buy. For comparison’s sake, the F-Type V8 S (which is a convertible – Jaguar’s backed themselves up into a weird naming corner. F-Types are soft tops, F-Type Coupes have hard roofs) starts life at $92,925. However, this is not a bizzaro Porsche situation where the hard topper (Cayman) costs more than the convertible version of the same car (Boxster). The V8 S has an engine that makes 488 hp and 461 pound-feet of torque. The R Coupe’s motivator produces a big boy 550 hp and 502 pound-feet of twisting force. There will eventually (most probably) be a convertible R version of the F-Type, and it will cost even more.

Back to Porsche, the 911 Carrera S starts out at $99,895, thirty bucks less than the R Coupe. The 911 adds two vestigial seats, but it’s down 150 hp. That’s 27 percent less power. Of course you could go for the 911 Turbo S because that car makes 560 hp and 516 lb-ft of torque. Only issue is, the big dog 911 starts life at $183,695, nearly double the price of the Jag R Coupe. Now of course, these are all base prices. The red and shiny Porsche Turbo S I drove across country was a few dollars shy of $200K. We haven’t laid our hands on a 911 Carrera S since we named it our 2012 Best Driver’s Car, but that blue beauty cost $123,840 in two-years ago money. This here Italian Red F-Type R Coupe stickers at $117,475. I should mention that $12,000 of that total pays for the Carbon Ceramic Matrix Braking System, also know as plain old carbon ceramic Brembos. An option you totally do not need. Also, I know that half of you are already typing, “Why not Corvette, lol?” That’s a great question that will no doubt get explored in much more detail in an upcoming something or other. Hint, hint.

As for performance, that’s a very good reason to purchase the F-Type R Coupe because she’s a bruiser. The classic American test of a car’s metal – 0-60 mph – happens in just 3.6 seconds, exceptionally quick for a rear-wheel drive machine. The quarter-mile takes 11.8 seconds with a trap speed of 122.3 mph. That 911 CS from our 2012 BDC competition hit 60 mph in 3.7 seconds and ran the quarter in 12 seconds flat at 117.1 mph. Very close to what the much more powerful Jaguar did, in fact. I must point out though, that that particular 911 is something of an outlier, as the last 911 we tested, the 430 hp (30 more ponies thanks to the included power kit), rwd, 50th Anniversary Edition 911 took 3.9 seconds to hit 60 mph and 12.2 seconds to run the quarter at 115.4 mph, a much more substantial difference. All three cars are close in our figure eight, with the heavier Jag requiring 24.4 seconds, the 50th Anniversary car needing 24.3 seconds and the Carrera S needing only 24.2. As for braking from 60 mph, the Jag and the Carrera S required only 94 feet, which is world class (best number we’ve ever recorded is 92 feet – Corvette Z06 with the Z07 package). For whatever reason, the 50th Anniversary 911 needed 106 feet to stop from 60 mph.

As for an incomplete list of other cars, the 911 Turbo S is one of the quickest accelerating cars in the history of earth. 60 mile per hour is dealt with in a nearly unbelievable 2.6 seconds and it eats the quarter-mile up in 10.9 seconds at 123.7 mph. Even with carbon ceramic stoppers, the lighter Porsche (3610 pounds, versus 3873 pounds for the Jag) needs 100 feet to stop from 60 mph. The Turbo S’s figure eight time is primal, however, doing the deed in 23 seconds flat. A Ferrari 458 Italia requires 23.6 seconds. What about the Corvette? The last Stingray we tested cost $70,770 (base price: $54,795), hit 60 mph in 3.7 seconds, ran the quarter-mile in 12 seconds flat at 118.4 mph, required 95 feet to stop from 60 mph and ran around the figure eight in 23.9 seconds. Meaning you get almost the same performance as the F-Type R Coupe – even better when you focus on the figure eight – for about $50K less than the 400 pounds heavier Jaguar. That said, I’d rather have the R Coupe for many reasons, but especially because of the way it sounds.

“I’ve always said the two cars I’d have are a Range Rover and a Porsche 911 Carrera,” Angus MacKenzie tells me as I’m standing in my familiar spot just inside his doorway, discussing the new hard top Jaguar F-Type R Coupe. “I still might have the 911,” he continues. “But Jaguar now has a compelling argument.” I went a step further stating that not only would I take a G63 AMG over the Range Rover, but that I straight prefer the Jag as a street machine. And I love the 991, but the R Coupe is plain more fun. Caveats and personal peccadillos abound, of course, but I think it’s quite telling that car guys talking sports cars are already putting the R Coupe on, or at least near, the pedestal. As to why my heart tilts towards Britain for sports cars, it’s because of what I’ve been rambling on about, the wicked sounds this car makes.

A few months ago I had the chance to try and beat up on a bunch of Jaguar Coupes near Barcelona, Spain. I had driven my long term F-Type S (380 hp convertible) to the airport, and had gotten right into a F-Type S Coupe (same supercharged 3.0-liter V-6, but a hard top) in Espania. The immediate apparent difference was the steering. So much so that I asked the Jaguar engineers if the hard tops had different racks (or whatever) than the convertibles. Nope, was the answer. Same everything underneath. The coupes are 80 percent stiffer than the open top cars, so the steering feels much more direct and precise. We then took to the track in some R Coupes and I was pretty disappointed. A surprising amount of understeer into corners turned into absolutely tail out oversteer when exiting.

Was it just me? No, and here’s what our race car driver friend Randy Pobst had to say a few months later after driving the R Coupe around the Streets of Willow, “Even these most gorgeous haunches still don’t put the prodigious supercharged V-8 power to the ground very well. But the sleek roofline adds rigidity, resulting in greater steering accuracy. A three on my understeer scale becomes an eight on oversteer as soon as the pedal goes down. That’s in the same manner as all recent Jags I’ve driven, save for the exceptional XKRS-GT.” As for the R Coupe’s time, Randy popped off a 1:24.93 around Streets. To give you some context, Randy did a 1:24.85 in a 565 hp Aston Martin V12 Vantage S that weighs about 200 pounds less than the sonically stonking Jaguar. However, Mr. Pobst was able to the take the aforementioned XKRS-GT around the Streets of Willow in a sprightly 1:22.53. That big cat outweighs its smaller sibling by almost 100 pounds, yet makes the same power. For a bit more perspective, Randy also muscled and hustled the lardy, 4500-pound, 520 hp Porsche Panamera Turbo around Streets in 1:22.68. So, the F-Type R Coupe isn’t exactly a track day special.

Back to Lleida, Spain if I may. The next morning we saddled up to head out on the road portion of the F-Type R Coupe drive. If you’d scanned my brain just before I buckled my seatbelt you’d have seen a thought that read roughly like this, “While fast as hell, the 550 hp V-8 simply isn’t the hard top F-Type to get. The thinking man’s sexy coupe is the S Coupe.” After about 5 minutes of blasting across the Spanish countryside over some of the most outstanding roads I’ve ever driven, my thought morphed to, “You’d have to be a f*cking idiot to buy the V-6. God bless this rocket car and all those who dwell within it! YEE-HA!!!!” I was behind the wheel for another two hours and I laughed the entire time. I wish you all could have heard the noises escaping from the quad, possessed bassoons that double as tailpipes. Seriously friends, this sucker is righteous.

At least that’s how I felt in Spain. Climbing back into the R Coupe months later I was a tad trepidatious, a little nervous that perhaps my feelings towards the snarling beast were being conflated with the Lord’s own road? Nope! After mere moments rocketing around the office, my old feelings were confirmed. The F-Type R Coupe is a constant sense of occasion, as well as one of the most thrilling to drive, sonically stupefying, and flat out alluring road cars ever created. It might also be historic, as it‘s the only car I can think of that could rightfully be purchased for the sounds it makes alone. Should you? Hey, life is short. Might as well enjoy the stuffing out of it. This particular Jaguar will help you accomplish exactly that.

For more than 200 additional photos of the 2015 Jaguar F-Type Coupe, head to the second page of this review.

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